Juice Up Your Gear On The Battlefield with the FuseChicken Titan Charge Cable

Charging cables are a part of my every day life, and it seems like I’m constantly destroying them – over bending, snagging, melting, and generally wearing out. So when FuseChicken contacted me about testing out their metal-armoured Titan Charge Cable for my iPhone, I was more than happy to give it a try. Any cable thats advertised as “virtually indestructible” sounds good to me.

What It Is

The Fuse Chicken Titan Cable is a USB-A>Lightning cable, meant for charging and syncing an iPhone or iPad. The cable is ruggedized with a full length metal jacketing, which protects the cable from over-bending, wear and tear, and general abuse. The metal jacket feels very similar to the metal jacketed cables that connect handsets on old-school pay phones – except this cable is much more stiff.

“We’ve all seen it – the frayed cables, cords tied in knots, and the happy puppy chewing on our charger. TITAN solves all of that and more with its industrial-grade cable that is wrapped in not one, but two layers of flexible, high-strength steel. The Lightning and USB connectors on TITAN are permanently sealed with a one-piece housing fused directly over the electronics and metal cabling. Meet the last charge cable you will ever need.“

Who It’s For

The cable is for the commuter who is thrashing their cables around, busy families dragging cables through the house, and people who use their devices in harsh conditions – like talking on them when plugged in, using them for live performances, etc. It’s also for propping up your phone – like in the cup holder of a car.

Testing Method

I tested out the Titan cable both at home and in my car, as well as while on the go. At home, I had it plugged into the charger in the middle of my kitchen bar. This is the charging area that typically sees the most use, both static charging, as well as actively using my phone while it charges. It’s front and center in my house, and frequently gets splashes from the sink, hot pots near it, and pushed around by papers and stuff. In my car, the cable was used with my 12v charger, and used to charge my phone as I drove. On the go, I coiled it up and stuffed it in my bag a bunch.

First Impressions

The cable is THICK, STIFF, and HEAVY. It certainly has a solid feel to it, and feels like it will last a lifetime. Because of the coiled metal outer jacket of the cable, it’s only possible to bend the cable so much – after too much of a bend, the coils of the jacket stop more bending – thus protecting the inner cable which carries power and data. Additionally, I appreciated that the USB and Lightning connectors seemed solid and well made – one piece moulded plastic. However, I did immediately notice that the Lightning connector was too big for the cutout in my Lifeproof iPhone case.

Like

The cable is certainly tough. After using it daily for a few months, it barely looks used – the silver color is still bright and sparkly, there are no kinks, dents, or scratches, and it continues to work reliably.

Its lightening connector, and USB connector seem to be well made – they’re not showing any signs of corrosion or wear – even after being forcefully plugged and unplugged a bunch of times.

I actually really like the combo of the chrome-silver cable and white connectors – looks classy, and I’m always proud to have the cable lying on my desk. It certainly doesn’t feel like just any old cable lying around.

The cable is magnetic due to its metal jacketing. This is actually a really great little nuance of it, that’s not really mentioned anywhere. Since its magnetic, I can stick it to a magnet that’s also stuck to a bolt on the side of my car console, thus propping up the cable a bit, I can also stick it with a strong magnet to the corner of my wall in the kitchen, where a thin corner strip of steel hides underneath a layer of spackle and paint, to reinforce the corner of two pieces of drywall. If I used this cable at my desk more, I could fully see a system using a magnet to keep this, and potentially other cables in check.

Don’t Like

Overwhelmingly, the one thing that I don’t love about this cable, using it as I’ve described above, is that it’s really stiff. Sure it looks like a metal payphone cable, but this thing is much stiffer than that. So stiff that it’s sometimes challenging to plug it in if you’re not paying a lot of attention, and so stiff that it’s kind of a pain in the ass to talk on the phone while the cable is plugged in. I can see how this stiffness would be nice for a product like FuseChicken’s “Bobine” products, which combine a self-standing dock with a cable. But for a simple cable that’s meant to be flexible, this thing just isn’t. I think this is the one killing issue for this cable. If I could weigh in with any advice, I’d say keep the “Bobine” line sold as flexible docks and use a stiff cable like this, and then keep the Armour line as the flexible tough cable, and get rid of the titan line. However, I’m yet to try an Armour cable yet…

It’s USB-A, and not USB-C. Of course, this is the spec of the cable, so of course it would be USB-A. However, I’d love to see FuseChicken start to roll their designs into the new futurespec of USB-C. I’m sure they have this on the radar, and I can’t wait to see an “indestructible” cable that works with a new spec bound to be in use for many years.

Should you buy it?

If you’re looking for a really burly cable to use where the cable is subjected to harsh wear, are going to be using the cable to power iOS devices in live performance settings with lots of setup/teardown, are going to be tacking this onto a wall for permanent installation, or other rough uses, go for it. However, if you need a rugged cable for every day use, including occasionally using the phone with the cable plugged in, than no, don’t get this cable – it’s overkill, and way to stiff for practical everyday use. There are lots of other rugged cables out there, and FuseChicken’s Armour line even fits this bill.

Final thoughts

Interesting to see different ways to imagine the simple charging cable. I’ve gone through my fair share of cables, and understand the frustration of a cable failing. The FuseChicken Titan Cable is extremely rugged and burly, and should last a long time. However, it’s stiffness prevents it from being truly easy to use, and makes it hard to plug/unplug, and hard to handle your phone with the cable plugged in.